Talent Management Imperatives
Talent management is strategically managing the flow of talent through your organisation and encouraging employees to continue to generate fresh perspectives, innovative ideas and constructive input. It’s about attracting and retaining key people, and allowing that talent to thrive – all of this combines to achieve and maintain a competitive advantage. Equally important is the need to introduce strategies which prevent loss of your key talent to competitors. The most effective people strategy is for companies to source the right people with the right skills and knowledge, in the right roles – overall this is Talent Management in its most pure, basic form. Real talent management though is about the few, not the many, meaning that companies focus on developing the potential of a few key people as future leaders and role models.
Business has become far more frenetic and dynamic, workforces are more complex and there is ever-increasing pressure exerted upon organisations to constantly be on the lookout for exceptional talent. With those workforces now often including three generations of workers all with differing needs and motivations, the management of such a talent base to remain competitive is driving many employers to think more strategically about HR, and workforce planning.
Talent management remains a critical issue facing senior managers and in the absence of a standard global best practice to follow, it becomes even more important to articulate the right definition of what ‘people needs’ should be satisfied by your talent management strategy. This necessitates that senior managers begin to place a similar importance upon Talent Management, as they do upon other ongoing business imperatives (such as increasing company turnover as the economy improves etc.).
With this intensified need, to carefully acquire, develop, deploy, motivate and retain key talent, smart managers understand the linkage and explore the synergy that exists between talent and their organisation’s business challenges and strategies. Defining key talent strategy will identify which of the team are to be excluded, and those high achievers upon which to focus. After all, it will be the talent which ultimately most differentiates your internal brand and organisational culture, so talent management must involve an integrated and wholistic approach.
Over time employee thoughts and actions will consistently form organisational culture. Ideal talent management should therefore be embedded across the entire organisation – modelled by the Managers, championed by your Leadership, and supported jointly through a range of HR and business initiatives as a priority. Many of these initiatives and decisions should also reflect the company’s Brand values.